Journeying

 

‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive’ (Robert Louis Stevenson)

You know what? I cannot imagine that many people (if any) are reading all these daily posts of mine! I guess I am really doing them more for me than for others (and so I apologise for clogging up you inbox, Twitter feed, Facebook notifications with these irritating alerts to tell you what you don’t want to know... that Denniston has posted again!)

Nonetheless, if – by any chance – you were reading my post about praying, and were concerned lest I be in danger of sinking into despair or depression, let me reassure you! I am feeling fine thanks. In fact, I am enjoying a week of holiday leave, am feeling very happy and content and chilled, and am pretty hopeful.

Yes, of course, I am often challenged by the poverty of my praying. But I (like all of us) am on a journey. And as we all know, if you need direction on a trip to be told ‘if I were you I wouldn’t start from here’ is the worst possible advice to receive! Here is where I am, and it is from here that I must begin the next part of the journey. There is no other place from which to start except from here.

So here I am, and I am on a journey. It’s a faith journey, a spiritual journey, a journey of discovery. I could wish that I was not starting from where I am, but here is where I am! And it is sometimes a painfully slow journey with too many diversions and u-turns!

But that’s what it is. And I still travel in hope.

Over these weeks of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, we will be hearing many stories of journeys. Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the Shepherds to the Manger, the Wise Men from the East, the Holy Family to Egypt, Jesus to the Jordan to be baptised by John and so on.

As we hear the accounts of all these journeys once again, perhaps it will help to remind us that we are all on a journey.  And perhaps where we are on that journey is not as important as how we journey and the direction in which we are headed.